


Expiration Date

by MilenaDaniels



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Birthday, Depressed Nathan Miller, Fear of Death, Good Friend Jasper Jordan, Imprisonment, M/M, Minty Fic Week, Monty's Birthday, POV Nathan Miller, Pre-Monty Green/Nathan Miller, Pre-Series, The Ark Station, The Sky Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4098109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilenaDaniels/pseuds/MilenaDaniels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Birthdays were a genuine celebration on the Ark. Every birth and every passing year meant the human race was still kicking away, still pursuing that endless dream of existence. And more than that, it meant advancement, it meant fresh eyes and new blood ready to tackle life as they knew it and transform it into something more, something better, something worth living.</p>
<p>In the Sky Box, birthdays were expiration dates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expiration Date

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 1 (Birthday!AU) of [Minty Fic Week](http://nathanmilers.tumblr.com/post/117655055629/welcome-to-minty-fic-week-june-7th-june-13th)! I don't think I'll be able to write a fill for the others but this prompt pinged my muse.

 

Birthdays were a genuine celebration on the Ark. Every birth and every passing year meant the human race was still kicking away, still pursuing that endless dream of existence. And more than that, it meant advancement, it meant fresh eyes and new blood ready to tackle life as they knew it and transform it into something more, something better, something worth living.

In the Sky Box, birthdays were not celebrations, they were expiration dates. Birthdays meant time was running out, that you had one year less to live until that last birthday where they marched you out of your cell for review but really, more often than not, straight into an airlock. No, birthdays in the Sky Box were not celebrated, they were mourned.

Nathan Miller had lived three of his own in the Sky Box, and seen four cellmates and heard numerous more neighbours be led out each year. So when, after months of solitude, his new neighbour showed up in Nathan’s 17th year of life, he wasn’t chomping at the bit to introduce himself. There wasn’t much point, after all. 

“Hey,” he heard someone whisper from the hallway.  The doors and walls were made of solid metal with no windows or slots except the one to the outside (which didn’t mess with your head at all), but some doors fit better than others and most of them had oddly large gaps underneath and on the hinge side which made it easy enough to hear what was happening on the outside, or in the nearby cells.

“Hey,” the voice whispered more forcefully. This was a routine all new inmates went through: testing the limits of their new environment, seeing what it would take to get the guards’ attention. Some tried to trash their cells, some cried for days like their lungs were being twisted out of their bodies.

“Hey!”

Some were just determined to be annoying as hell.

Nathan let out a huff and tried to focus back on the pages of his book. He got a new one every couple of months as part of an informal library exchange the guards allowed. Their schooling was cut off once they were imprisoned (why waste resources on kids who would never grow to be adults and productive members of society?) but fiction books they had aplenty.

“Hello?” The voice tried again. Now that they gave up on whispering, Nathan could tell his new neighbour was a guy. 

“Anyone there?”

_Clearly not, so shut the hell up._

“Jasper?” 

Nathan took a deep breath and tried not to throw his book against the far wall, only because he wouldn’t be getting a new one for a few weeks.

“Jasper, you here?”

“Oh my god,” Nathan heard himself yelling back, “would you shut up?”

“Jasper, is that you?”

Nathan’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“Obviously not.”

“Then I’m not talking to you, am I?” The guy retorted, and Nathan could feel his lips curl back derisively.

“You know, it’s funny, but that in no way makes you less annoying to listen to.”

There was no response to that, and Nathan was irritated to feel a slight stab of guilt before shoving it aside with practiced ease and turning back to his book. He had managed a full two pages of reading the words without understanding any of them before the guy spoke up again, sounding entirely more subdued.

“I’m just trying to see if my friend is here. We got nabbed at the same time but then they split us up.”

Nathan didn’t care.

“I thought…I don’t know. I guess I hoped we’d be put in together. I didn’t expect to be put in solitary.”

Nathan still didn’t care. 

“You’re not in solitary,” he said, placing his finger between his pages to keep his place. “See the bunk beds? Welcome to Gen Pop.”

“Nobody else is here though.”

No, because Jerrica had been the last in that cell, and she turned 18 three months ago.

“Must be a slow month,” he said.

“Do you have people in yours?” 

“Nope,” he said as disaffectedly as he could.

“So then we’re basically in solitary confinement.”

Nathan shrugged, then realized the guy wouldn’t perceive that but whatever, he didn’t feel like elaborating. 

“Do you think it’s possible they’ll put Jasper near here?”

_How the hell would I know?_

_What does it even matter?_

_You sound too old to have much time left anyway._

“If he’s anywhere as annoying as you, I’m sure we’ll be alerted soon enough.”

“I’m so glad I could find someone so kind to help me in this trying time.”

Nathan smirked, and went back to his book.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, I’m Monty, by the way,” the guy said the next morning, interrupting Nathan’s dead-eyed stare out the window. For a second, Nathan listened for the other person before realizing it was him.

“Are you talking to me?” he said, just to be sure, injecting as much irritation into the question as possible.

“Get over yourself,” the guy - Monty - sniped back. “There’s a very sentient-looking dust-ball in my cell, and I’m just guessing here but it’s like three times more interesting than you are so if you don’t mind…”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, forgive the interruption.”

“Can you believe this guy?” Nathan heard Monty saying in a lower volume that was still entirely audible from his cell. “Like I don’t have better options than to talk to some jackass who’s obviously lost all social skills, if he had any to begin with.”

_Jokes on you, dick, because I didn’t, and I don’t care._

 

* * *

 

Aside from the occasional nightmare - about his parents, about the walls caving in on him, about drifting in ink-black nothingness with no air to breathe - sleep was probably the most peaceful part of the Sky Box. They were far enough from essential services that there weren’t constant messages on the intercoms, or the grind of equipment repairs going on 24/7. And with so little to do, sleeping most hours of the day was how a lot of delinquents got through their incarceration. 

Nathan, in particular, had been alone in this corridor of cells for a while, and had benefited from impeccable sleep in that period. So he was more than a little put out by being woken up in the dead of night - as judged by the lights being turned off in the cells and low in the corridors - by the new kid next door. When his tired brain realized the source of the disturbance, Nathan’s fist curled immediately. God help the little shit if he was trying to call out for Jasper again at night.

Nathan listened carefully, ready to start yelling the second he heard him again. But the guy didn’t call out for anyone. The first sound Nathan heard clearly was ragged breathing, the kind you get when your body and mind can’t agree on what it wants to do. Most new kids had that their first days. Some new kids tried to keep it in, tried to act tough, like the Sky Box wouldn’t get to them. That was before they realized the Sky Box isn’t a prison but a waiting room. Once they came to that realization, there was really no reason to stay tough anymore. 

Nathan’s realization had come a few months after he moved in, and he’d only lasted that long because he’d been working under the delusion that his being the son of the Chief Guard would mean anything in the long run. Once he did away with that, he’d cried for probably three days straight. He’d had two cellmates at the time, and both of them had been sympathetic but didn’t try to do anything to help because there wasn’t anything to do. 

This new kid was either coming down from a break or trying to stave one off; he was struggling to keep himself together, and Nathan just listened for a while, his eyes trained on the window, which was the best reminder that there was no point in trying to help. 

The noise became more distressed, but more muffled, like Monty was trying to silence himself with his pillow, and Nathan’s heart hurt a little hearing it. 

Silently, Nathan slipped out of his bed and carefully sat down against his door, still listening. 

There was nothing he could do, and there was no point getting upset about it.

He just sat there, leaned his head against the door and stared at the faint light leaking in from the corridor while Monty cried himself out.

Nathan’s butt was numb before things got really quiet again; he thought Monty might have cried himself to sleep but every now and again there would be a long, tired sigh, and he knew the kid had reached that place of numbness that comes after a cry that is in no way cathartic.

“Hey,” he called out gently, his finger tapping reflexively against his own door like he was knocking. “I’m Miller. Nathan Miller. You can call me…whatever you want, I guess.”

He realized he’d been hoping for something like “I’ll just call you Jackass then” or something else that showed the snippy little brat was alive and well, but there was only silence. 

Nathan stayed sitting by the door till the lights came on anyway.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Nathan?” 

Oh hell no.

“Okay, I know you said you could call me whatever but I didn’t realize how weird Nathan sounds out loud, so you can pick Nate or Miller.”

Silence.

“I don’t know, I got pretty fixed on Nathan,” Monty replied teasingly. “And the idea that it’ll bug you is a huge plus.”

Nathan smirked. “You can always go back to talking to Terrence instead.”

“Terrence?”

“I named your dust-ball, hope you don’t mind,” Nathan explained.

Silence again.

“Oh my god,” Monty exclaimed. “It actually looks like a Terrence, that’s so weird.”

Nathan found himself laughing quietly, his cheeks twinging a little from disuse.

“So…hey, Nate?”

“Hm?”

“Is there a reason they’d keep Jasper somewhere else?”

Nathan thought about it for a minute but honestly he had no real information.

“I know they keep us on difference levels by age,” he said.

“Jasper’s only a couple months younger than me.”

Nathan fought the urge to congratulate him on not having to watch his friend die. Breakdown or not, Monty probably wasn’t ready for the morbid positives of his new life.

“Any reason they’d have him in solitary?” He asked instead.

“No, not if I’m not in there. We did everything together, we should have gotten the same sentence.”

Nathan had nothing to say.

“Would…would they have floated him already?” Monty asked, almost whispering.

“No,” Nathan said firmly. “Not unless he killed someone and even then, I’ve never heard of anyone being floated before they were 18.”

Nathan thought that comforted Monty somewhat until he heard, “I’ll be 18 next month. On the 28th.”

Nathan closed his eyes, and felt angry for feeling a pit in his chest. He had known he wasn’t allowed to care. He’d known and he’d done well since his last cellmate. He’d known, and still it hurt.

 

* * *

 

They never spoke of Monty’s birthday again, but they spoke of other things. Why they were there, what family they’d left behind, and all of Monty and Jasper’s exploits. Which made it interesting when the infamous Jasper finally showed up, five days after Monty had moved in.

Every inmate received a physical once upon admittance and then every year after until the end. Apparently, Jasper’s physical had revealed high blood pressure and they’d kept him in Medical on meds until it got back to normal levels.

“They wanted to make sure I was healthy enough to die,” Jasper called out across their cells with a cheerful bitterness. He hadn’t been placed with Monty like they’d hoped. Instead, he’d been placed with Nathan, and out of the three of them, exactly nobody was happy with that arrangement.

Before Monty, Nathan had been free to do whatever he wanted without being interrupted. After Monty, he could still mostly do that with small bursts of conversation here and there that didn’t end up sucking too bad. But now, those time where he wasn’t talking to Monty weren’t free to do what he wanted. Now he had to watch and listen to Jasper talk to Monty all damn day, and look back to see if Nathan was eavesdropping which of course he was, but not on purpose.

Monty tried to include him -

 

_“Alright, high five!” Monty cheered._

_“High five!” Jasper replied, his hand hitting air like a moron._

_“I didn’t hear that, did you do it?”_

_“Of course I did it!” Jasper said, offended at the accusation._

_“Nate, did he do it?”_

_“You’re asking him?” Jasper yelled._

_“Yes,” Nathan answered Monty. “It looked stupid.”_

_“Okay listen, do-over,” Jasper said over him. “Ready?”_

_“Ready!”_

_“High five!” Jasper yelled, this time hitting his own hand loudly and hearing an echo of the same noise coming from Monty’s cell._

_“Alright!” Jasper cheered._

_Nathan only just managed to refrain from throwing his book at him._

 

\- but it never quite worked out.

Monty and Jasper’s conversation became Nathan’s new background noise, and he tried to convince himself it was a new form of entertainment but it didn’t quite work.

He also didn’t manage to convince himself it was fine that his immediate social group had grown 200% in recent weeks and there was once more a deadline on his horizon. Monty’s birthday was only weeks away, Jasper’s would follow a few months after that, and Nathan would outlive them both, again, if only by a few weeks.

But he refused to care.

While Jasper and Monty chatted away, Nathan’s hands stopped flipping the pages of the book he’d read three times and picked one at random. Slowly, meticulously, he ripped it out of the book as close to the binding as possible and once it was free, he just kept tearing until he was left with nothing but half-inch scraps. Strangely, he felt better. 

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Nathan had a bout of deja vu when Monty started whispering “hey”. It was early morning, and Jasper had proven to be a late riser, so Nathan got out of bed and sat next to the door.

“Jasper’s asleep,” he whispered.

“I know, I wanted to talk to you,” Monty said.

“Oh, what do you need?”

“Nothing,” Monty said, sounding like he might have been smiling. “Just haven’t talked to you in a while. Thought we’d catch up.”

Nathan was glad Monty couldn’t see him because his expression definitely would have been seen as rude. It was bizarre to have him want to catch up like they were old friends going for lunch once a month.

“You know I’ve been here a whole week today?” Monty put out.

Nathan’s eyebrow lifted in confusion.

“Congratulations?”

“Thanks,” Monty drawled sardonically. “So what have you been up to?”

“The same nothing as usual?”

“And you’re wondering why I missed talking to you,” he said sarcastically.

“You never said anything about missing originally,” Nathan pointed out with a grin that grew when Monty seemed to stumble for a response.

“Jasper up yet?” Monty asked, his voice higher than usual.

“Nope, you’re stuck with me,” Nathan replied, his teeth biting his lower lip to keep him from smiling any wider.

“I guess that’s not so bad then,” Monty admitted, sounding awkward and adorable.

Soon enough though, their talking woke up Jasper, who took his place at the door with a tired shooing motion. 

Nathan retreated back to his cot and went to pick up his book out of habit when he saw he’d left the scraps on top, so he busied his hands at using them like puzzle pieces while Japer and Monty talked. He was counting them out to see if he could fashion some kind of grid to play Tic Tac Toe with Jasper when he realized he’d ripped the page up into exactly 30 pieces. He laid them out on the cover in four rows of seven, and one of four and went to bed early. 

The next morning, on the 28th, Monty wasn’t calling for him, which was good, because he didn’t think he would have answered. Nathan found his book cover, pressed on a single scrap with the pad of his finger until he knew it would stick, brought it between his finger and thumb and crushed it. Then he turned over in his bed and spent the day asleep.

 

* * *

 

Jasper didn’t succumb to his moment of realization until Nathan had only six pieces left on his book cover. It came when he understood that that day would be the least Tuesday Monty ever saw, and the next day, the last Wednesday. He cried in his bed, and Nathan made no move to comfort him. 

They both ignored Monty’s call at the door. 

 

* * *

 

“Are you going to ignore me until they come for me?” Monty asked on the eve of his 18th birthday. He wasn’t talking to Jasper, who’d been back at the door almost 24/7 after he’d cried himself out. 

Nathan ignored him, like he had for days. 

But today he ignored him from a sitting position at the door, his head leaning against it like when he’d reached out to Monty the first time.

“I don’t care, you weren’t even that good a conversationalist,” Monty said huffily. But he didn’t stop talking, as though he knew Nathan was there.

“I feel like I don’t know enough,” Monty said. “I feel like it can’t possibly be my time because I don’t know enough of what I wanted to. I was supposed to be an engineer, you know? My other friends are engineers and they’re amazing. They can pick apart the grav generators and put them back together twice as better as they were, and they’re fearless about it. I was just apprenticing - shadowing really - when I was arrested but I was so scared to touch anything. I felt like I’d unscrew on thing and the whole Ark would unbuckle and break apart.

“But I know how to open this door,” Monty said, wistfully. “I always have. But I’m still here.”

_What the fuck is wrong with you, GO! Get out! Save yourself!_

“But there’s no point, is there?” Monty continued.

_No, there isn’t._

“I could get out and make it home and then what? My family would be arrested for harbouring a fugitive. I’d be floated immediately, no pit stop in Sky Box. And that’s been the worst of all of this. Knowing that I know how to free myself, free all of us, but also knowing it’s pointless. That’s probably why I was bugging you so much before Jasper came. Because I couldn’t be stuck with those thoughts by myself.

“So, thank you, Nate. For being there. I really need you to be. So thanks.”

Nathan actually would have replied then, he wanted to say something, but his throat had closed up and tears were dripping from his jaw line to his shirt, and he didn’t want Monty’s last memories of him to be of words spoken through tears. 

 

* * *

 

Nathan’s plan, awful as it may sound, had been to sleep through the night and hopefully through Monty’s execution, but despite those intentions, he hadn’t managed to get a single wink of sleep. Jasper had fallen into a fitful sleep around the middle of the night but Nathan had laid there, on his side, staring out at the star-filled darkness absently wondering if he’d see Monty float by after it happened. First and last meeting face-to-face, you know? Unless there was more than one floater that day who was a guy, and then he might not know which was Monty. That would probably be upsetting. He hoped that didn’t happen. 

When the lights came on in the cell, Nathan sat up on his cot, hands fisted on his knees, stock still and listening. They always came in the morning, maybe as a last kind gesture to the delinquents, to keep them from having to wait through that last day. 

Monty wasn’t making any noise, not whispering, not crying, not shuffling about, and Nathan hoped he’d somehow managed to sleep through his last night. The corridor was silent too - the guards making their rounds hadn’t gotten to this level yet, they were usually the last, usually an hour or so after lights-on - until it wasn’t.

It’s a strange thing to feel such overwhelming fear and helplessness at the soft sound of distant boots walking. With every decibel they grew louder, Nathan’s heart beat harder until he thought it might just up and quit on him. They were only a few doors away when Nathan threw himself on the ground next to the door.

“Monty,” he whispered harshly. “Monty, are you there?”

_I’m sorry._

_Everything’ll be okay._

“I’m here,” Nathan said, his voice breaking. 

_Don’t be scared._

_Thank you._

“I’m here, Monty. I’m right here.” 

The footsteps reached them, and the clang of a door being unlocked jarred him.

“Monty, I’m here!” he yelled, not bothering with being quiet now. 

Jasper woke up and was stumbling out of his cot to join him when their cell door suddenly opened and knocked them both back, admitting a group of guards. 

“Let’s go, get up,” the closest guard ordered.

“It’s not our time,” Nathan said. He wasn’t protesting, he was just pointing it out.

“Plans changed, you’re going on a trip,” one said, roughly snapping a wrist band on his wrist.

“All of us?” Jasper asked, craning his neck to see into the corridor, and yell, “Monty?” 

“Jasper!” 

They could hear Monty yelling but they couldn’t see him, and by the time they were dragged out of the cell, there were masses of people, enough that it looked like they were clearing the place out. And by the time they got to the dropship, even he and Jasper had been separated to different levels and buckled in with armed guard watching.

And then they were dropped, and the great, dark, starry nothing waved to him as they passed it by and crashed onto Earth.

 

* * *

 

Nathan heard the victory cry of “We’re back, bitches!” distantly from the upper deck of the dropship, and then it was all bodies pushing at one another to get out and into fresh air for the first time in their lives. 

He had to admit, it was pretty great. 

But greater still was getting not five feet from the dropship before hearing, “Jasper, don’t eat that!” accompanied by the sound of a hand slapping another. 

He had survived the landing. They both had.

Feeling unexpectedly nervous, Nathan took a breath before turning to pick out his former cellmate from the crowd, and next to him…a tall, dark-haired asian guy in a red jacket. Monty. He was looking at Monty.

“Is it poisonous?” Jasper asked, holding a dark leaf between his fingers.

“No,” Monty conceded, only to have Jasper stuff the whole leaf into his mouth.

“You’ll just have diarrhea for three days straight,” Monty continued, completely unsympathetically. 

Jasper promptly spit up the entire contents of his mouth to the ground, some of it landing on Monty’s leg and shoe. 

“Ugh, god, Jasper!” he yelled, shoving his friend.

“Hey,” Nathan yelled himself. “Would you shut up?”

He saw Monty freeze before he turned around and they finally locked eyes, an excited smile quickly replacing his frown.

“Is your name Jasper?” Monty asked haughtily, a brow lifted, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Not even close,” Nathan said as he took a few steps forward.

Monty took a few steps of his own and said, “Then I don’t think I was talking to you.”

Nathan scrunched his nose and said shrugged. “Doesn’t make you any less annoying.”

“Hey, you have to be nice to me, it’s my birthday.” Monty smirked.

And through the euphoria of standing healthy and whole and free on Earth, Nathan remembered the panic and pain of just a few hours ago, of destroying 30 scraps of paper one by one, and when he spoke next, it was just as watery as he didn’t want it to be when they last spoke.

“Happy birthday,” he said quietly, and sincerely.

Monty smiled wide and replied, “Nice to meet you.”

He stuck out his hand out of reflex and Monty reached for it before stumbling forward suddenly, as if pushed, and Nathan’s arms snapped out around him to help him stay on his feet. Before he could release him again, Monty’s arms were winding around him, and Nathan didn’t have a single problem with that. 

“Nice to meet you too,” he said, adjusting his arms and squeezing slightly, now that he actually could.

 

* * *

 

So this was Earth, then.

With Monty and Jasper sharing his tent, it felt surprisingly similar to the Sky Box. 

Except here, he could turn his head and take in all of Monty’s sleeping features. And there was also the changing temperatures, the fresh air, and how lights-out was literal once the sun went down. And they weren’t protected here, they didn’t know what was out there in the wild, and already the camp was being tossed around as different people tried to take control. 

But that constant feeling of foreboding that had taken root in his chest years ago was dissipating. When he looked up through the hole in the makeshift tent, he could see the sky of emptiness and stars, and he knew it couldn’t take him anymore. And he’d smiled at least six times today (the last time was when Monty said “Goodnight” and picked the cot closest to his to get into), and laughed outright twice.

So this was Earth, and these were friends, and this was Monty, the one who didn’t die. And maybe that was enough for birthdays to become things worth celebrating again, for all of them. But Monty’s most of all. Monty’s would definitely go down in history as the best. No contest.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully that happy ending was happy?? Why is it always angst with me and this fandom!? Also, the tag Good Friend Jasper Jordan is there because if Minty had had eyes for anyone but each other, they would have seen a goggle-headed guy running away after Monty "stumbled" into Nathan. That warrants an A+ in my books.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~Now somebody make me work on/fix my other two fics that need to be posted~~


End file.
